HOUSE OF LIES

by Francoise Mallet-Joris ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

With the concerted exactitude and ugly-but-real type characters of her two previous novels, The Red Room and The Illusionist, Mile, Mallet Joris explores abnormal psychology and judges with a merciless ethical expertise. Klaes van Baarnheim, an opulent enterpreneur, is about to die. His house, like his life, is a collection of lies -- each member propitiating the old man with a view to his will. The one thorn in his side is Elsa, the mother of his natural daughter, Alberte -- who refuses to be pensioned away from Antwerp and wreaks havoc with her drunken stories. This last pathetic grasp at dignity contests Klaes' omnipotence and, failing to buy her off, he seeks to redeem his thwarted ego through Alberte, an awkward, deceptively simple girl of The Triangle (the tenderloin of Antwerp). By legitimizing Alberte and leaving his fortune to her the crafty manipulator will achieve a triple coup. He will startle Philippe, Roger, Madame Nunez, Yves and whole town; he will confirm his pecuniary power; and he will absolve himself of a gnawing guilt about Elsa. Contrary to this neat plan, Alberte, at the death-bed, blurts out her virtual support of her mother's act and Klaes dies utterly dis-wrought and vitiated saying ""She didn't want it. Why?"". This is a book about the controllers and the controlled, the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong... and about the good and the bad -- a noticeable omission in so many contemporary psychological exposees. The facets of detachment, cruelty and human ugliness, the love-sex minimum confine this book to a rather intellectual market.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1957

Categories: FICTION